Temwa - Sustainable Community Development, Malawi

Thursday, 22 December 2011 17:48

MotoThumb2 Malawi is currently suffering its third fuel shortage of 2011. There were two earlier in the year during February and July, and this one may not be the last. This chronic lack of fuel is hugely disruptive; it is causing chaos to businesses, public services and Temwa's charitable projects.

Temperatures during the day are often reaching as high as 40 degrees. People are enduring the blazing heat and queuing at fuel stations, often for over eight hours. Some are so desperate to get fuel that they are even sleeping in mile-long queues over night and having to forgo meals whilst they wait.

Sadly, a steady market for illegal fuel selling has opened up. Unscrupulous traders are mixing fuel with other substances for very high prices. "This current fuel crisis has made everything come to a halt," says John Kapito the executive director of The Consumer Association of Malawi (Cama). As a consequence "businesses have started pushing commodity prices up, which further aggravates the cries of the consumer". Unfortunately, salaries have not been adjusted to meet the increasing cost of fuel and basic commodities such as bread, sugar and meat so life is even harder for the Malawian people.

Operating Temwa's projects is becoming increasingly challenging because we often cannot get fuel when we need it for our field work. This causes delays and frustration for farmers because they are kept waiting. The morale of our staff is also affected when they are forced to wait, reschedule or cancel activities that are planned.

Fuel

Now there is some fuel available but unfortunately the prices have increased by 30% and that cost is predicted to rise in the near future. So this decimates our budgets faster than the projects are implemented. Key staff members are also using up hours of productive work time by looking for fuel or queuing for it. In fact, some of the team have had to travel 300miles to Tanzania to buy fuel. This obviously affects the quality of our work because a lot of valuable time is spent on this administrative chore.

Despite this situation, Temwa has not come to a grinding halt and we will continue to strive to do our best for the communities in Nkhata Bay North during these challenging circumstances.